About Me

A RETIRED NEWSWOMAN, I live in a scenic creek-valley in a semi-rural township in northeast Ohio.
Topics and frequency of postings are according to my mood.
My mood is usually upbeat. I value my friends and my family; they are a treasured part of my life..
(DIRECT BLOG COMMENTS TO randrmoore@gmail.com)
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Sunday, January 18, 2009

THE GIVERS AND THE TAKERS

Are you happy to hear on the news that some of our country's biggest companies have set up off-shore tax shelters... including companies who have received government bail-outs! (Bank of America, AIG and others). These shelters, in the form of subsidiary companies, have cost the U.S. Treasury a loss of many billions of dollars, and eight out of 10 such subsidiaries were formed solely for the purpose of escaping taxes... while at the same time, many such companies are being aided by the money WE pay to the U.S. Treasury.I think back to a year when our family was scraping through another serious recession and the menu at our family dinner table was nutritious but basic. A neighbor's freezer had failed, and he asked permission to bring his frozen foods to our freezer, which by this time of year was close to empty; we'd already gone through most of the foods we'd frozen from the harvest of our family garden.This man, whose family had lived on welfare for a good long time, took a look at the goulash casserole, salad and homemade bread on our dinner table and said, "That's FOOD!!?? I wouldn't feed that to my DOGS!" He was right. His family WAS apparently eating better than ours. The foods he was transporting to our freezer included such things as lobster tails, steaks, prime rib... all top-shelf foods. They were living high in other ways, compared to many, using every advantage welfare had to offer, and they really knew how to manipulate the system. My working family and others were producing the taxes that allowed this family's life style.The executives and companies I referred to at the start of this posting are far richer than that neighbor. But here's the parallel; both are on government assistance provided by the taxpayers--that's all of us who work.My question of the day: How soon will the "takers" of this country outnumber us "givers?"